It Would Not Burn
by Kaze-chan
Summary: An experiment in semi-historical fiction, set in the years after World War Two, trying to answer the question of just HOW the Shi Jin Ten Chi Sho got where it did... (Rated solely for "soldier language")


  
DISCLAIMER: IIIIIIII dooooooo nooooooot owwwwwwwn thiiiiiiis (I think I'm funny, but I'm really not)   
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is a sort of experiment for me, my first real attempt at writing historical fiction. I did a LOT of research for this thing, pulling out notes from my old history classes and doing "Douglas MacArthur" searches on a few different search engines.   
This is a manga-based story, but you don't have to read the manga to understand it. You just have to know two things:   
A) In the manga, the book is in Yui's and Miaka's neighborhood library, not the Japanese National Library   
and B) The book is already translated into Japanese by Okuda Einosuke, Takiko's (Genbu no Miko) father.   
Everything else'll hopefully make sense.   
I can't stand historical fiction that messes up dates and stuff to tell the story better, and I've tried to be as accurate as possible with this story. It's a bit new for me, an experiment, if you will. Hope you like it ~_~   
  


*************************************************************************************

  
  
It would not burn. It would not tear, rip, bend, cut, _anything_. There was simply no way to destroy that book, as Okuda Einosuke, Ohsugi Takao, and Ohsugi Suzuno discovered the hard way. Suzuno did not even want it destroyed, it being her only link with her beloved Tatara and other seishi, but she reluctantly agreed that Takiko's tragedy should be prevented and no more young girls should be sacrificed to the two remaining beast gods. There was no guarantee, however she wished to believe it, that Takiko had been a fluke, a mistake, that Suzuno wouldn't be the only one to live through it. So she agreed with her father's plan to seal it away.   
Takao often caught Suzuno looking at the book with a wistful expression on her face, as if longing for the world it was a gateway to. But too many bad things had happened because of that hellish book, the death of his best friend and goddaughter not the least of it. And while he had gotten his daughter back, Einosuke had had to kill his. He was grateful none of the rest of the family knew about this, he'd been able to cover up her disappearance for the few days she'd been gone, but he knew the sheer terror of reading the book, wondering if he'd have to perform the same impossible duty Einosuke had, wondering if she'd even come BACK for him to perform that duty. He knew, he felt it in his bones even to that moment, and he wanted to prevent any other parents from feeling the same. And protect Suzuno from the book. She might be called again, but he would not let her go. He was resolved to put it away far from her, where she would be out of its reach forever.   
To this extent on one of his business trips to Tokyo he rented a safety deposit box in one of the best banks in the city and placed the book in there, the sole object laying on the flat gray steel, hoping against hope it would never fall into another girl's hands.   
A few years later he died a natural, quiet death, leaving the key to the deposit box in Suzuno's care, along with a note that she could take care of herself. Suzuno grew up into a fine woman but never married, even though she had several determined suitors, her love for Tatara remaining strong, constant as the earth beneath her feet. Once or twice a year she would go down to Tokyo, open the deposit box, take out the book, and simply sit looking at it, remembering her days as Byakko no Miko, her love, her other seishi and dear friends… the wish that could not be granted. More often than not silent tears would straggle down her cheeks in a ragtag parade, and she refused to acknowledge them, even to wipe them away. They, and the old school uniform she kept locked in a trunk in her attic, were the only reminders she had of the happiest time of her life.   
No one could have predicted World War Two.   
With the bombing of Pear Harbor everything was thrown into chaos, anti-American feelings raging loudly in the streets, and war was quickly declared. Allied with Germany and Italy, Japan helped ignite the global struggle that would end up changing the face of the country forever, throwing the Emperor out of power two years after it finally ended and giving birth to the new Japan. And hidden beneath the horror of what "the uncivilized foreigners did to democratic society", there were American atrocities as well. The fire-bombing of Dresden in Germany was one such. And, overshadowed by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was the bombing of Tokyo, where thousands of civilians died and a great part of the city was destroyed.   
And one of the buildings that was wrecked was the bank in which Ohsugi-san had left the book, the bank where Suzuno sat, silently crying, one or two days a year. When Suzuno, safe near Morioka, discovered what had happened, she locked herself in her room and cried for a day, refusing all her friends' attempts to comfort her. She thought she'd lost her last link to that world forever.   
But the book still stubbornly refused to die. Instead in lay smoldering under piles of rubble from the wrecked and damaged buildings, still in the safety deposit box, although the steel was now black and warped, melted through at some places. And there it waited to be discovered again…   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

  
  
_Honestly, this sucks,_ thought Frank Morrow as he walked down the street in Tokyo. _Do these people think I'm some sort of god or something?_   
Frank had been one of the lucky ones to live through the entire war. He'd enlisted in '42, received some basic training, and was sent to the Pacific to fight the war on the side of right against the evil empire, destroying the bad in the world and letting freedom ring true. Or so he'd thought. In reality it had been mud, rain, sweat, and heatstroke, day after day, nearly every one bringing with it some strange new island they were attacking or defending in the island-hopping strategy MacArthur kept pushing. And it had worked, he guessed, but life in the army certainly wasn't what he'd thought it would be.   
All he wanted to do now was go home and forget what he'd seen, done, heard, and experienced. His best friend in his platoon had died right next to him, mercifully shot in the head. He wanted to forget it. Forget it all…   
But he was stuck on these damn islands, and again stuck under MacArthur, who'd been appointed head of the occupation forces. The war had ended the year before, and he'd been there since then, helping the men he'd been fighting rebuild their cities, government, and way of life. It actually wasn't all that bad - strange new culture to learn about, new language, new weird food - but… the Japanese treatment of the American soldiers was varied and not always pleasant.   
Just the other day he'd been charged by a man he was certain he'd never seen before, a man yelling what sounded like curse words and insults in his native language, which he was picking up but wasn't anywhere near fluent in. Thankfully two other men had grabbed the rampaging one and held him back, ducking their heads quickly in that strange custom of bowing they had as they held him long enough for Frank to get away. Some people greeted him as a savior. In some places he was nearly chased away. But... the strangest thing of all was he could part crowds of people like Moses in front of the Red Sea.   
It was true. It had been explained to him, after the first time he'd experienced this somewhat-disturbing, very disconcerting occurrence, that most Japanese had rarely, if ever, seen blond hair and blue eyes. So when they noticed him, a blond-haired, blue-eyed corn-fed boy from Missouri dressed in typical American-style clothing, they drew back, making a path, staring openly, some even reaching out to touch him reverently, as if in fact he _was_ a god descended to earth.   
_Shit, they have enough gods in that strange religion of theirs, maybe I look like one of 'em._ He'd just been through it again, on his way to a site he'd volunteered to help excavate, clear out the rubble in preparation for new and better buildings. He knew he'd never get used to it, no matter how many times it happened. _All right, calm down Frank, easy does it there. No use getting squashed today just because you don't get out of the way in time because you were thinking of these Asian weirdos. And I_ guess _it's not as bad here as it could be… But I've definitely seen better._   
The chaos that had been Tokyo was slowly coming together and rebuilding, helped by the American soldiers. But there were still many people without homes, many people barely living, all because of those damned bombing raids… _It's not right to attack civilians,_ he thought bitterly, his hand clenching into a fist at his side. _It's just not right. They have no part in this. Those people didn't have to die…_   
Even though they had been enemies, he'd seen too many Japanese lives destroyed because of American acts of injustice. It was impossible to think of them collectively as one single "enemy", as he had when fighting on the islands. Now they were individual people.   
"Hey, MORROW! WAKE UP!"   
His head snapped to the left and he blinked in surprise. He'd walked right by the excavation site. His buddy Ted O'Brien, who'd signed up for the work with him, was standing on a relatively small pile of refuse, waving at Frank. Frank meanwhile was twenty feet down the street and quickly came running back, grinning sheepishly. "Whoops… head in the clouds there for awhile."   
"Yeah, like it's not the rest of the time. C'mon, you'n me are on scavenger duty." O'Brien grabbed Frank's arm and began pulling him over to a group of men huddled near the middle of the site.   
Frank wrenched back his arm and jogged after him. "Scavenger duty? What the hell is that?"   
"Turns out this place used to be a bank. Pretty big one at that. So we're s'pposed to go through the stuff they dig up and see if we can find anything good in there."   
"Ooh, money…"   
"Don't even think about it. I've already heard the warnings about pocketing stuff that you're about to get, but the basic idea is if we take anything, they leave us here when everyone else goes home."   
"Oh, god forbid…"   
"Yeah, understand now?"   
"Perfectly."   
O'Brien quickly introduced him to the Japanese man who was (ostensibly) in charge of them, a mister Arihyoshi, who spoke surprisingly good English. Arihyoshi once again repeated the detailed warning about taking anything they found and assigned them a square in the grid system that had been laid over the site, one that the giant cranes had already cleared of the large pieces of junk like twisted support beams. Frank and Ted quickly bowed, remembering the custom that time, and trotted off to begin work.   
When they broke for lunch it seemed they'd hit pay dirt: their section had obviously been (when there was a building there, of course) part of the safe, where all the deposit boxes had been. It had lain deep within the building, so even though the building as a whole was destroyed and fires ravaged its dead skeleton, they kept finding surprising things like full envelopes stuffed with papers. There was valuable jewelry, what were obviously official documents, money, and other things more reminiscent of everyday life, like (quite surprisingly) a child's rag doll. They ate a quick box lunch, seated on a piece of cement pipe, and returned to work for another couple of hours.   
They had sifted through most of the remaining debris in their section when Frank let out a muffled curse and gripped his right index finger in his left hand. "Shit…" he breathed, as the warm scarlet liquid began to pool in his palm.   
"What? What'd you do this time?" O'Brien scrambled easily over the junk and landed in front of his friend, sending a small cloud of dust scattering on the light breeze.   
Frank held his hands out, a drop of blood falling to the dirty ground. O'Brien made an expressive face. "That's not good. Go get a bandage or something, I think Arihyoshi has some for stuff like this."   
"All right, and leave that thing for me, I wanna get it back." Ted saluted him as he ran off towards the boss.   
Arihyoshi did indeed keep a first aid kit handy for situations like these, and Frank held his breath as they washed it, put iodine on the jagged cut to clean it, and wrapped it in a small bandage. It was almost funny, even after going through a war he was still squeamish about cuts. The temporary doctor, an associate of Arihyoshi's, bowed him away and Frank returned to work, determined to find that piece of scrap and take out some aggressions on it.   
Ted had already fished it out of the small crevice it'd been stuck in but politely left it in the cleared space for Frank to disassemble. It was another deposit box, one that was badly melted and warped in places and almost perfect in others. But then again, so much of the debris from this site was like that.   
"You better now Frank?"   
Frank waved his hand in Ted's direction, showing the fresh bandage, and his friend nodded. He could see a bit of his blood, drying an ugly brown, on one of the jagged pieces of steel sticking out from the box. _Ahh, so there're your teeth. Well, let's see you try and bite me now._ He picked up a crowbar that O'Brien had found for them to work with, holding it like a baseball bat over his shoulder, trying to find the best place to hit it. Ted stood well away, his normal smirk on his face, entertained by the sight of Frank Morrow having it out with an inanimate object. Well, screw him, he was getting that box. He selected a spot that was already half-warped open, and swung the crowbar hard. It connected with a resonating clang, rebounding slightly in his hands as the box itself fell flat on the ground, sending up a small dirt cloud.   
"Damn thing…" He inserted the hooked end of the crowbar into the small opening and began plying it like a lever, moving it back and forth rapidly, stepping on the end of the box and putting his weight on his leg to keep it there. Ted just watched him look ridiculous.   
"You… better… have something… good for me," Frank grunted, determined to win. "Just… you…"   
The lid popped open, hitting his leg. He jumped back quickly, ignoring Ted's laughter, and dropped the crowbar in the dirt. He knelt next to the box and peered in, angling it to get more sunlight to the interior.   
"So what priceless treasure did ya find this time, Morrow?" Ted approached him and knelt on the other side of the box.   
Frank pushed him back. "Get back, damnit, you're blocking the light. Hey, what's that?" He craned his neck to make his head lay nearly flat on his shoulder, peering into the farthest part of the box. There was, indeed, something back there, something fairly large. It was also partially pale-colored; the off-white was all he could see. He grabbed the box and turned it over, shaking it to get whatever it was over the humps and around the warps, and a book tumbled out of the twisted steel to the ground at his feet.   
"Shit, that's it? A _book?_ No jewels? No cash? Nothin'?" Ted scoffed and sat back on his heels. "Frank, that's absolutely worthless."   
"Hey, wait a minute, it could be valuable. It looks really old, maybe a rare book dealer would like it. They say those guys pay fortunes for a really good find." Frank turned the book over, to what the Japanese considered the front cover but he couldn't think of as anything but the back, and peered at the strange symbols written there. He couldn't for the life of him make out what they were saying, although if he heard the words spoken he'd probably be able to pick out a few things. He flipped open the cover and began thumbing through the pages, passing over the ones with simply writing on them, pausing briefly on those with pictures. "Ted, you majored in literature, right?"   
Ted shrugged. "Might as well not have bothered with all the use I've gotten out of it. And you _know_ that, so why'd you even ask?"   
"Can you tell what the thing's about by the pictures?" Ignoring O'Brien's typical sarcastic comment, he held out of the book, open to the first picture. "It could tell us what the hell it _is_, at least."   
Ted looked at him for a second, then took the book and began slowly turning the pages.   
"Umm… other way."   
Ted reversed direction.   
A minute later he snapped it shut. "Looks like some kind of adventure story. Or maybe a romance. Or horror. Couldn't really tell, that's a varied set of pictures."   
"Maybe all of it. Sounds almost like a radio drama. Ahh well, it's old, it's gotta be valuable."   
"Arihyoshi's gonna like it, that's for sure. He seems like the 'money' type."   
"Yeah, he does. He's pretty decent, though." Frank tossed the book behind him at the pile of things they'd already sifted out. "Ready to get back to work?"   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

  
  
As much as he tried to deny it, throughout the rest of the afternoon Frank could not stop looking at that book. It was a ridiculous thought, but he could almost feel it _watching_ him… for one reason or another. Maybe he was going crazy in this new place. He wouldn't doubt it.   
He looked quickly at the book again, then blinked and shook his head rapidly, trying to clear it. "Frank, are you OK? You've been twitchin' all afternoon." Ted's face appeared in his field of vision, wearing a very unusual slightly worried look. "You're not getting sick or anything, are you?"   
"Wha? Me? No way," Frank quickly replied, hoping to cover his actions. "I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night. Shall we knock it off and go back?"   
"Sure…" O'Brien was clearly still skeptical, but he kept it to himself and began gathering the items they'd sifted out. "We've got to take this to Arihyoshi though."   
"Yeah." Frank, too, stooped to lift things into his arms. He reached blindly to the pile, but the first thing he came in contact with was undoubtedly the book. He blinked again, unnerved.   
Then his body went out of his control.   
He tried to stop his arm, tried to freeze it in place, but it closed around the light-colored spine of the book and lifted it of its own will. His eyes shifted by themselves to see Ted with his back turned, and his arm stuffed the book inside his shirt and went back to peacefully picking up the rest of the day's loot. He couldn't make a sound, couldn't move by his own will, his body was a machine controlling him instead of the other way around. Oh god, he was going to die… He dimly heard Ted calling to him, and himself responding, then they were walking across the lot and laying their finds out on a table in front of Arihyoshi and his aide, who took down an inventory of everything - well, the aide did. And then, in a daze, he was walking back with Ted to the barracks, somehow talking easily. He simply wasn't in control of himself.   
He nearly fell to his knees when O'Brien left him at the door of the room he shared with a couple other soldiers, heading for his own bunk. He dimly realized he was sweating heavily, but ignored that for the time being and pushed the door open, hoping his roommates weren't in. The room was thankfully empty, and he collapsed on the rickety bed he spent every night in.   
What the hell had HAPPENED to him?!   
If he'd been religious, he would've said he'd been possessed. But he'd always been more for facts than mysticism, and his mind refused to accept that as a possibility. But… how else did he explain that?   
He hadn't been him. He'd been a prisoner. In his own body. There was _definitely_ something wrong with that…   
The cool leather of the book pressed into his skin, and brought his mind to a screeching halt yet again. _Oh, shit. Oh, shit shit shit shit SHIT! I'm DEAD! Or worse, stuck HERE!_ He hastily dug in his shirt and pulled out the book, mostly stunned but slightly amazed he'd forgotten about it and Ted hadn't noticed it. _I didn't even want to bring it… what in the hell is going_ on _here?_   
He stared at the innocent-looking object laying in his hands. _Something…_ his thoughts were disorganized, fitted with wings, flying anywhere they pleased in his head. _There's something about this… It was… It was WATCHING me at the site… there's something really fucking strange about it…_   
And there was only one way to find out what that "something" was.   
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~   
_Two years later…_   
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~   
  
"HEY! Frank!" The door slammed open, crashing against the wall with a metallic screech of protest. Frank hurriedly dropped the book on the other side of his bed, behind his shoes, and tried his best to look interested. "Did ya hear?! Did ya?!"   
"What are you talking about, Bill?" he asked - in perfect Japanese.   
William "Bill" Rolan, one of his roommates, stood in the doorway and blinked. "What the hell did you just say?"   
Frank sighed and sat up on his bed, placing his feet on the floor to more effectively screen the book. "You all are hopeless, you know that?" he inquired, switching back to English. "We've been here, what, more than two years? And you still don't know any of the language… Pathetic."   
"Hey, not everyone's a dialects buff like you. But _liiiiiiiisten!_ Word's just come down from the top! _WE'RE GOING HOME!_"   
Frank blinked. "We're what?"   
"Damnit, you're insane and DEAF! Listen closely! WE'RE. GOING. HOME." Bill stressed every word, slowly pounding one fist into the palm of his other hand at the same time. "We're getting out of here! Back to civilization!"   
"This _is_ civilization. We built it, remember?"   
Bill stared wide-eyed at him.   
"Did I grow another head or something?"   
"You're… You're joking, right?"   
"About what?"   
"This being civilization."   
"Not really."   
"God… Jesus, I come in here and tell you we get to go _HOME_ and all you can do is go 'This is civilization'! What the hell is _wrong_ with you?! We're leaving! We're going back to where we belong!" Bill turned and punched the wall hard in frustration, feeling little pain because of the calluses on his knuckles. Almost everyone had them, there'd been lots of reasons to punch things in the past few years. "Home! Shit, you're an idiot for calling this civilization." He turned to go out the door.   
"When are we going?" Frank asked quietly.   
"In a week. I'd start packing." The door slammed and cut him off from view.   
He sighed and lay back on his bed again, putting his hand over his eyes to block off the light. A week… Two years, and he'd learned nothing. And it would all be over in a week.   
He couldn't explain it, like he couldn't explain a lot of things, but ever since that day at the remains of the bank, where he and Ted had found that old book, he'd been trying to put together its puzzle. Why had it felt like the thing, which couldn't be alive, was watching him? Why had he been drawn to it? Why had he lost control?   
He'd done the first thing he could think of to help him figure it out - he learned Japanese. He started going out in his free time and lurking in the shadows, just listening to the natives speak. He'd managed to find a Japanese man who knew very good English, and the man - Nakagawa-san... God, he was even starting to _think_ in Japanese. He'd also learned about the culture and customs from this kind man, who'd said he'd rarely had a pupil as interested as Frank. As he learned he would pick up the book and skim through, trying to see how much he could understand, and every time more and more of the words were revealed to him.   
Immersion in a language, he knew, was the best way to learn it quickly, so he immersed himself in as much Japanese as possible. In barely a year he was nearly fluent. He began reading the book in earnest, starting at the front cover - the American front cover had almost ceased to exist for him - and studying the pages. He'd meant to inspect it minutely, taking his time, but the first words of the story swept him up as if he was trapped in a spell, and soon he was just reading…   
…About a girl from another world who would be called into the world of the book to save the country of Sairou. She was called Byakko no Miko. She was a powerful girl, called to serve the beast god of Byakko, the White Tiger of the West. She had seven celestial protectors, called the Byakko no shichiseishi, or just seishi, who were divinely picked to guide her, help her, and guard her. Tatara, Tokaki, Subaru, Kokie, Toroki, Amefuri, and Karasuke. The story was everything Ted had thought it would be and more, and it had a tragic ending: Byakko no Miko had fallen in love with Tatara, but she had been forced to return to her world. They promised to remain faithful to each other for all time, but the parting was still filled with tears.   
He read the book over and over, unconsciously committing it to memory. He was slightly puzzled that they never gave the miko's name, but it didn't really matter. After he'd read it repeatedly, he set to work trying to find something out about the one Japanese name in the entire thing - Okuda Einosuke, the man who'd translated it from the original Chinese. But with the destruction of almost the whole country and the formation of a new government, Frank had been unable to find anything, even in a year.   
He sighed and uncovered his eyes. He'd tried so hard. And all for nothing. Nothing. He'd be returning to the world he'd grown up in, where his mother and father and brother and sisters lived their normal, boring lives, back to where he went to high school, junior high, elementary… and for what?   
Again, for nothing. Nothing, his heart now resided in the country he'd been forced to come to at first. He was one of the few he knew who'd taken any time to learn about the way of life before the war, the things his roommates and friends didn't care about, but he found strangely fascinating. It was a place for him to start a new life after the atrocities of war, where maybe he could be useful instead of another factory worker. It all might have started rather strangely, but he couldn't deny that it seemed like he belonged there now. More than he did in Missouri, anyway.   
He had to get out. He knew he had to find some way to escape. He didn't care if it was deserting (but were they really in the military any more? It had been more like they needed something to do with them and so dumped them in a foreign land), he didn't care if he was court-marshaled, he just had to _get away._ And never look back.   
The commanding officers decided to go all out in celebration of the news that night, ordering out vast amounts of (American) beer and playing jazz records at a party for their men that night. Bill and Frank's other roommate, Rob, were there, getting drunk. Ted O'Brien was also in attendance, as were most of his other friends, except the ones who were on duty. Everyone had a great time, toasting America repeatedly, singing patriotic songs (and discovering that "Oh say can you see" was a lot more humorous when one was drunk), and generally behaving like soldiers. Except for one. At the beginning of the impromptu party Frank simply sat on a stool at the bar and watched. He didn't reach for a beer, as his fellow soldiers did, preferring to retain his wits for what he had decided to do.   
Ted, who was also avoiding excessive inebriation, had a sharp eye, and the stony countenance of his fellow scavenger yelled for him to _look at Frank!_ Frank's eyes were fixed on a point on the wall opposite him, never moving and rarely blinking, unfocused and dilated. Ted frowned, remembering how much his friend had changed since the occupation had started, and fought his way over to claim the stool next to him, setting his drink on the bar. "What're you lookin' at?"   
"Nothing."   
"Well, actually, you're prob'ly lookin' at Patterson's head 'cause it seems to be in your way."   
"Maybe."   
"And you're unresponsive."   
Frank eyes didn't move an inch. "And lo and behold, here we are, like sheep to the water hole, being herded without complaint in the direction the shepherd wants us to move, never questioning our orders." His mouth formed easily the strange syllables it had taken him months to comprehend, a language both harsh and beautiful and completely unlike any western language he could think of. He looked at his friend.   
Ted was the picture of studious dissection, his eyes narrowed downward, not in anger but rather concentration, trying to mentally pick apart the long string of Japanese Frank had just spouted at him. Frank gave him time, O'Brien was trying his best. "All right…" Ted began, "the most I got out of that was something along the lines of 'docile sheep'. Don't tell me you used another dialect again."   
"Hey, be glad, I could've started the Okasa one."   
"God forbid, I still have enough trouble with our variety!" Ted had made an effort to learn at least some of the language so he wouldn't be completely helpless. He was one of the few people Frank still genuinely respected.   
"You'd get used to it if you wanted to. I'll be back." Frank stood up and smoothed his shirt down, then wound his way through the celebrating soldiers to the large doors of the room they affectionately called the "hellhole". Ted watched him go, something pricking at the back of his mind, small and unidentifiable, something slightly suspicious. He patiently sat there, waiting for it to come clear.   
After a while he checked his watch. It had been fifteen minutes. More than enough time to go to the bathroom, if that was where he had gone, and if he hadn't… well, he better get back before the officers found out and wrung his neck.   
Five minutes later, he decided to go drag him in by the hair if he was still AWOL.   
Ted pushed his way through the room and out the doors, glancing left and right for Frank. There was the occasional soldier, mostly drunk, standing around the entranceway, but no sign of the self-described corn-fed white boy. He turned right and walked down that hall, then another, then another, then a few more, until he had passed both bathrooms in easy distance. Nothing. He redirected his steps in search of Frank's room, ready to chew him out himself if he was sleeping.   
"Frank?" He rapped sharply on the metal door with his first two knuckles. "Frank, buddy, you in there?" No answer. He waited a second, to be polite, then opened the door and stuck his head in.   
The room was deserted. There was not a sound in the air, a flutter of movement, a flash of color. The dull army-style paint was as dim as shadows, and he quickly reached for the light switch. There was something different here, he didn't know _what_, but he had to see…   
The dusky room flooded with light as his finger found the switch. At first he couldn't tell what was wrong. All three beds were neatly made with military precision, a habit no one had been able to get out of, stuff wasn't scattered all over the floor. It was a normal, if bare room. But then something caught his eye.   
Or rather, something _didn't_ catch his eye. Ted walked over to Frank's bed and sat down on it slowly, staring at his bedside table. The old springs of the thin mattress creaked beneath his weight, and the bed gave a slight shudder as all of them were prone to doing, but Ted paid no attention. The table… was… was bare. There was nothing there.   
Ted had been in Frank's room enough in the past two years to know some of his habits. When he started to learn Japanese, Frank began keeping a sheaf of papers on his table, a homemade dictionary of useful words. It had been there since he'd started going to that old man, learning that strange language… and now it wasn't. Ted reached out a hand hesitantly and touched the table. The pattern the dust had laid down around the stack was undisturbed, a nearly perfect rectangle of shiny wood surrounded by dullness.   
Frank was gone.   
Ted shot to his feet and ran to the foot of the bed, his foot catching on the leg and sending him sprawling flat. He didn't pay any attention to his mishap, simply pulled himself as quickly as he could to Frank's army-green trunk, positioned, like the others, at the foot of his bed. He slammed up the lid, making the trunk rock back on its supports a bit as there was now little weighing it down.   
All the pictures, photos of his family, his friends, his high school sweetheart, usually tucked neatly in the lid… gone. His army-issue duffel bag… probably with him. His clothes, his shoes, his books… missing. The wood-lined trunk was empty, save for a single piece of paper with a scribbled note covering the blank whiteness. Somehow the pale color only emphasized the trunk's emptiness. He blindly reached in and grabbed the paper, narrowing his eyes to try to make the writing clearer. Weren't history majors supposed to have better penmanship? It was barely more than chicken scratch! He stopped such stupid thoughts and began reading.   
_Ted-   
I know you're probably the one reading this. Sorry about doing this to you, but I can't go. I just can't. I don't know why, but I just can't leave this country. So I'm packing and escaping while everyone's distracted. I don't care if there's a court-marshal, I filled out my term long ago by anyone's terms, and damnit if they want me they can come after me. I shouldn't be too hard to find, after all: blond hair, blue eyes, kinda stick out, you know? But I don't think they'll care, what's one small soldier after all? I've still got your address, I'll write when I'm settled some place, let you know I'm all right. But I'm not staying with everyone another minute. I've got my own life to lead.   
-Frank_   
"Damnit… That selfish… _bastard…_" The fragile paper crumpled in his fist. "I would've gone with you, you bastard…"   
  


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

  
  
Frank Morrow became one of the first American expatriates to Japan.   
He wandered for awhile, taking odd jobs, helping rebuild the least-important parts of the country, perfecting his Japanese. He barely even thought in English after awhile, and more and more his native language came to be associated with the other side of the world where yeah, he knew some people there, but they were _over there_. Not where he was. Eventually he returned to Tokyo and found a small apartment and a job at one of the new high schools MacArthur had demanded be built where, ironically, he taught English to teenagers. When he bothered to think about it, he realized it helped him keep a grip on the language, helpful in writing letters to friends and family. He never married.   
And about twenty-five years later, he died peacefully of heart failure, a problem that was common in his father's family.   
When his friends cleaned out his apartment, one of the things they found was a stack of boxes of old books. Several of them knew that Frank (or "Furanku" as they pronounced it) collected these things, "rescuing" them from the shelves of dusty bookstores and pouring over them. One box was filled with adventure stories, one with romances he couldn't help buying even if he didn't read them, another four with simple history books, another with ones having to do with mythology from all over the world, and several others besides. The will said nothing about what to do with his treasured collection, so his friends and former students turned the books over to the local library. There, impartial librarians sorted the books, fitting them with stickers and shelving them as they saw fit. Frank had made some lucky purchases; a few of the books went into the Important Documents Reference Room.   
Where years later, studying for her high school entrance exams, an apparently-silly middle school senior and her best friend found one of his books, opened it, and began to read…   
  


*************************************************************************************

  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES II: This was semi-inspired by/written in response to a sort of... a suggestion (not sure if that's the exact word for it) on Tomo no Miko's site. Sometimes it didn't want to get written, but I beat it with birch sticks and made it work ~_~ See ya 'round next time, everyone.   
(PS-- If you see any typos, PLEASE let me know! They're notorious for slipping by me and it's annoying the heck outta me!)   
(PPS-- You probably didn't notice this, but if you did, no, you're not seeing things. I had to remove and re-upload this story.) 


End file.
